Nøkken
by slire
Summary: A fairy tale told by a grandmother to her granddaughter. AU: something else found Jack that wintry night of his birth.


**Disclaimer:** Disclaimed.

**A/N: **My style experimentation continues.

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**Nøkken**

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It is autumn, the season of rain and late colours.

The huts in the small village lean each other for support. Planks creak and wind howls through holes in the roof. The girl lies in a small bed right next to the kitchen, rosy face half hidden underneath thick wool sheets. The parents are off to the church, partaking in a meeting held every Saturday night—"demon washing" as the priest calls it. Complaining about being left alone will earn the girl nothing but lashes with bound birch twigs.

"Grandmother," she calls.

"What is it, my girl?" The old woman is frail and half blind. Her black widow dress is in tatters, worn since her man died at sea. The villagers whisper that she'll die in the winter, seeing as how it'll be a hard one. Her children cannot provide for her, not when another little one is on the way. Yet she never stops smiling.

"Tell me a fairytale!"

"Very well." The grandmother wobbles over to a stool near the girl's bed.

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_Once upon a time there was a boy as bushy haired and coarse skinned as the country itself. He was going into the forest to chop wood. _

_"Don't go too far!" his mother calls after him, "And do not listen to the songs of the forest creatures!"_

_"I won't!" The boy holds up his father's silver cross. It twinkles in the rising sun. He walks on, axe swung over his shoulder. Without fuel, his family won't survive the upcoming winter._

_It doesn't last long until he's lost sight of the mountain village. He walks past ponds, hills and forests until he finds a fitting tree to fell. Spruces surround him, taller than his house and older than his village. Green needles fall into his hair. He lowers the axe. Chop chop chop. After a while, it falls. He binds it to a carrying device his brother made (his mother calls it a devil machine) and starts on the home trip. _

_He walks past the other forests. A Huldra dances among the trees, tail making a trail behind her. She hums alluringly, begging him to come with her. He does not spare her hedonic body a second glance. _

_He walks past the hills. Troll children watches him from afar, heads looking like tussocks. The cross keeps them away. Their whispers of gold and glory don't sway him from his path._

_He walks past the ponds. At the last one, he halters. Out from the bog trots a great white horse. It is a stallion, like in the tales of kings, its fur as white as snow. Has it run away from a castle somewhere? _

_"Something so beautiful cannot be evil," the boy states as he approaches the horse, stroking it. Its fur is so cold. "Poor thing." It raises its majestic head, watching him with eyes darker than the water in the pond. Transfixed, he grabs after its soft mane, struggling to get up on its back. Finally, he does. It is then the horse starts to sprint. The boy has enough with staying on the horse. Its mane dashes into his face. Still, he recognises the direction; they are heading straight for a pond. "Wait!" he cries. _

_Horses aren't supposed to grin. _

_With one last push of its legs, it leaps into the murky pond. Under the water, the stallion changes shape. A boy with light blue skin—like a drowned child's—and bluer eyes hold his hands in an underwater waltz. White hair, previously fur, dances like grass. Grass in the wind. But there is no wind here. No air to breathe. Its—his—grin towards the drowning boy widens. He won't let go._

_The water is so cold. _

_It is the last thing he feels._

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"But who _was_ the boy, grandmother? Aren't _nøkken_ supposed to be a small, slimy man?"

The grandmother smirks. Unbeknownst to her children, husband, and village, she's more than just an old lady. She gets some herbs and roots from one of her many pockets. She puts them in front of the girl's bed. "This will be a protection. Because what I will tell you now is a secret tale, no fairy tale at all, told to me by a wizard in the mountain. You must promise to never tell."

The little girl nods solemnly. A promise is a big thing to children.

"...Good girl. Well, you see, this was no usual nøkk, oh no... He'd been brought up among them. But someone was interested in him—someone much more powerful than me, and you..."

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The white stallion lowers his head to drink from the pond, passive.

Screams are heard all around him, screams of horses burning alive. Unforgettable screams. _Their_ screams.

Nightmare sand mixes in with the fog resting over the bog. It creates the illusion of black and grey smoke battling each other. In the background, the sand forms six horses awaiting their king's orders. A dead tree's shadow stretches to fall over the white stallion, hands stroking its fur. The Nightmare King materializes.

"Beautiful. Fingers—previously tangled in its light mane—now hold a boy's chin up, hard. Ironic how the child that drowned three hundred years ago now drowns other children. "But horrible."

The boy falls backwards into the pond. Corpses float up, and so does he, skin as bluish as theirs. His wet, white hair clings to his forehead. He caresses the freshest one's cheek and rips a necklace from the lifeless body. "_He_ said I was beautiful, too. Too bad he didn't tell me his name. I like knowing their names." He rests his head on his elbows. Like a mermaid. Pitch doesn't like mermaids. Too ditsy.

"But you never tell them yours, Jack Frost."

Hearing his own name spoken unsettles him. Ice emerges on the water around him. "That's against our rules."

"I thought you didn't follow any rules."

Sounds of disapproval are heard from the bog's tussocks. The shadow—still materializing—stomps his foot down onto their heads. He doesn't like water spirits either. Slimy little creatures.

"Don't hurt my brothers, Nightmare King," says the creature from the pond.

"They are not your brothers."

"Not by blood, yeah, but they trust me like I'm one of them. They've even taught me their shape shifting abilities." Sounds of approval come from the tussocks. Pitch presses his heel down, a stiff smirk on his lips.

"Yet your desires are stronger than theirs. I can feel you from here, Frost. And I know you keep souvenirs of your victims, something your _brothers_ would never do."

"Don't mock me, fear spirit."

"I'm not a fear spirit. I'm more than that," replies Pitch. There is a chill to his tone, one that Jack Frost can never match—a coolness that's evoked by dark rooms, a sense of abandonment and a feeling that something terrible is about to happen. "You, in some ways, are."

Frost grounds his teeth together and throws the cross over to Pitch. It's always fun to watch the trolls explode when he does that. But it has no effect on Pitch, unfortunately. "Worth a shot."

"Fear is stronger than belief, I'm afraid. Heh. Fear _is_ belief." Pitch lets the cross fall into the water. At the bottom, it blinks in silver. "Why do you think religion exists? Why do you think _we_ exist?" Pitch glides over the water without touching it.

"I kill children. I drag them to the bottom. I drown them. I watch their eyes go white. That's who I am."

"It's a part of you. And I know you do all those things, after all, I accompany those children when you drag them down. Haven't you seen me beside you in those dark waters?"

Frost's fingers curl. "We have met before, and I have refused you twice. If I say no to you now, our law keeps you from asking again. So something must have happened that made you think you had an upper hand."

Pitch raises an eyebrow. "Rumours say you were originally appointed among the Guardians, but they didn't want a child murderer among them. But the Man in the Moon always has his way. So they'll come get you." He stretches his hands upwards, and they look like smoke. The Fearlings dance around his feet. "I thought I'd give you a chance to take another path."

"With you?"

"Yes."

The tussocks murmur sourly, but they are considering the Nightmare King's words. This is the only thing that keeps him from infecting them with shadow fungi.

"Both of you want to enslave me. No, I don't care how you put it, that's what you want, yes? If I join you I'll get infected with darkness. And if I join them, I'll have responsibilities, and disappear if people stop believing in me. Both sounds equally shitty. What makes you different?"

Pitch holds out a hand. "I offer you _fun_."

Frost's dead eyes glitter. He grabs it.

"Deal."

"Nice to meet you, Jack. I think we'll be good friends."

No sooner than he's said that, darkness travels from Pitch to Jack. Jack shakes, but Pitch _won't let go._

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The little girl lies awake that night, afraid. She thinks about what her Grandmother told her.

Out of a sudden, she sees shadows outside her window. But her grandmother's herbs and roots keep them out. She hears a neighing with a hysterical touch to it. And among them, standing out—

a great white stallion.


End file.
